I'm going to avoid posting a summary to encourage my fellow attention deficiters to actually read the article (I know your instincts!), but I will post some food for thought: there are any...
I'm going to avoid posting a summary to encourage my fellow attention deficiters to actually read the article (I know your instincts!), but I will post some food for thought: there are any misconceptions about the brain that seem to have a lot of cultural inertia (and this isn't isolated to Neuroscience either). Why do these misconceptions stick around and why are they so hard to correct? Is it because they offer a simple, just-so explanation? Is it that they are the first thing we often hear about and they are repeated by enough people it becomes cemented in our minds? I'm inclined to think it's a mix of both.
Damn you, you caught me, I was looking at the comments for a summary ;) I ended up reading the article, as per your suggestion, and it's definitely interesting. I will note that when I attended my...
Damn you, you caught me, I was looking at the comments for a summary ;)
I ended up reading the article, as per your suggestion, and it's definitely interesting.
I will note that when I attended my neurology / psycho-pharmacology classes in the mid 2010s, there were already prevailing ideas of ADHD being related to the transmitter mechanisms, not the neurotransmitter themselves. So I wonder if these misconceptions are as ubiquitous as the article suggests, or if it's indeed just people repeating things they don't really understand, but they recognise the word 'dopamine'.
I had a similar experience to you regarding learning about these hypotheses in college, but I think a lot of people get information about this sort of stuff from friends or social media. For...
I had a similar experience to you regarding learning about these hypotheses in college, but I think a lot of people get information about this sort of stuff from friends or social media. For instance, the idea that people doom-scroll because they want dopamine, when a lot of the science points to other molecules associated with feelings of pleasure (not even getting into the idea that it's not the molecules themselves but the neuronal networks they act on).
I find that the best way to balance "I want people to read this" and "I want to encourage people to participate and have lots of people comment" is to pull out a few interesting sections as quotes...
I find that the best way to balance "I want people to read this" and "I want to encourage people to participate and have lots of people comment" is to pull out a few interesting sections as quotes without actually summarizing.
I'm going to avoid posting a summary to encourage my fellow attention deficiters to actually read the article (I know your instincts!), but I will post some food for thought: there are any misconceptions about the brain that seem to have a lot of cultural inertia (and this isn't isolated to Neuroscience either). Why do these misconceptions stick around and why are they so hard to correct? Is it because they offer a simple, just-so explanation? Is it that they are the first thing we often hear about and they are repeated by enough people it becomes cemented in our minds? I'm inclined to think it's a mix of both.
Damn you, you caught me, I was looking at the comments for a summary ;)
I ended up reading the article, as per your suggestion, and it's definitely interesting.
I will note that when I attended my neurology / psycho-pharmacology classes in the mid 2010s, there were already prevailing ideas of ADHD being related to the transmitter mechanisms, not the neurotransmitter themselves. So I wonder if these misconceptions are as ubiquitous as the article suggests, or if it's indeed just people repeating things they don't really understand, but they recognise the word 'dopamine'.
I had a similar experience to you regarding learning about these hypotheses in college, but I think a lot of people get information about this sort of stuff from friends or social media. For instance, the idea that people doom-scroll because they want dopamine, when a lot of the science points to other molecules associated with feelings of pleasure (not even getting into the idea that it's not the molecules themselves but the neuronal networks they act on).
I find that the best way to balance "I want people to read this" and "I want to encourage people to participate and have lots of people comment" is to pull out a few interesting sections as quotes without actually summarizing.
I usually do that, but I was poking fun at people with ADHD (myself included) as we tend to just read summaries and not engage with the full material.